Car damage by business employee - where do I stand legally?

Melanie1972

Hi

I had my bumper (which was in perfect condition) damaged badly by the employee of a store when they were loading something into my boot (paving stones were dropped on it).  As it happens I was in the process of part exchanging the car at the time, so it would have delayed the exchange on my new car if I had got the damage repaired.  As a consequence I by default, took a hit on the px price of my car due to the damage, so I asked the garage for a quote for what the repair would have cost through them.

The shop have accepted liability without issue, however, before they would pay up they asked for 3 quotes.  By this point it was impossible for me to do so, as I'd already exchanged on the new car.  Several months passed with me chasing and getting no response, so I'd finally had enough and sent a 7 day letter before action to the shop.  They have now responded saying they want proof of the difference in value between what the undamaged version of my car would have been worth versus the actual version.  I can see why they are asking for this.  However, what really annoyed me was their statement that actually I 'hadn't paid for the repairs I'd been quoted for'.  In my eyes this is irrelevant and they should pay for the damage whether I decided to get it repaired or not.  I remember when I leased a property once I had to pay for the whole carpet for one area of damage, I'd asked for proof the carpet was replaced but was told it was up to the landlord whether he kept the damaged carpet or not and I just had to cough up.

Does anyone know where I stand legally on this?  Reason I ask, is that I swapped the car back last Nov so would suspect that the garage will argue that they cannot calculate the two versions of the px price now as too much time has passed.

Thanks in advance

Ayr_Rage

If you were "in the process of part exchanging" then I would assume you would have already had an indication of the price they were offering as part of the negotiations.

The store should pay the difference between that and what the garage actually gave you.

It shouldn't be too much of an effort for the garage to give you those figures.

Your loss is only that figure, not the cost of repair as you did not keep the car.

Your carpet example is not much help, you can't repair carpets unlike car bumpers.

Aretnap

Have a read around the Coles v Hetherton case 

https://www.fenchurchlaw.co.uk/coles-v-hetherton-implications-for-recovery-actions/

By my reading the loss is assessed in terms of the reasonable cost of repair, whether or not you actually got the repairs done for that price. If you have a quote from a reputable garage thenb that should be enough - there should be no need to collect multiple quotes.

If you can quantify how much you lost in the trade in as a result of the damage then that's probably an even better measure of the loss in value that you suffered, but in the absence of that the repair quite is the starting point.

DullGreyGuy

Technically you claim for the loss in value of the asset, if you speak to a judge, and the cost of a repair (limited to the value of the asset) is just an easy/simple proxy of this. Speak to an engineer and they'd likely disagree because people underestimate repair costs and so the reduction in value is typically less than the repair costs but the courts routinely accept this. 

In this case you should have the perfect answer though, what was the reduction in value they gave from when they valued the PX before the damage and what they reduced it to post the damage.  That is what you lost and therefore the appropriate compensation.